Crises, competition and conflict: What’s in store for the Middle East in 2026?

With an assertive Israel and numerous local rivalries, the region is entering a year in which the cost of error is rising

Forecasting is a thankless business and often one that appears, at first glance, only partly rational. Yet it remains indispensable. Without an effort to look ahead, it is impossible to craft strategy or design public policy in a way that reduces information asymmetry and uncertainty.

In politics and economics, it is more accurate to speak not of “forecasts” in the strict sense, but of identifying trends when observing the behavior of key state and non-state actors. That is precisely the approach taken here, as we outline the main dynamics likely to shape the Middle East in 2026, taking into account national, regional, and global specificities.

One point is beyond dispute. The world is entering a phase of profound transformation, and 2026 is likely to deepen the atomization of the international community, accelerate the formation of macro-regions, and further dismantle the old world order, even as tentative contours of a new one begin to emerge. For the Middle East, however, this period will, regrettably, most likely bring a further intensification of confrontation and a steady buildup of conflict potential.

In 2026, the Israeli–Palestinian relationship will almost certainly remain the region’s principal source of tension. Instability will persist not only because of Gaza, where the ceasefire regime and the understandings reached remain fragile, but also because the conflict continues to reproduce itself across several fronts at once.

Gaza is not a closed chapter, but a constant stress test for the entire region’s security architecture. The most acute pressure point lies in the implementation of the agreement’s second phase, which envisages Hamas’s disarmament.

For Israel, this is framed as a necessary condition to prevent the reemergence of the threat. For Hamas, it is seen as the loss of a core instrument of survival and political leverage. This is precisely why the risk of collapse rises as the process moves into the second phase, as it demands decisions that are difficult to force through without triggering a domestic political crisis on both sides.

Israel’s internal dynamics will further amplify this fragility. The political crisis inside Israel is far from resolved, and the right-wing coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu will continue to fight to retain power. Under such circumstances, the perception of an external threat becomes a convenient tool for mobilization and control, as it helps consolidate supporters and discipline coalition partners. External tension turns into an argument in domestic politics, and the space for flexible decision-making narrows.

The danger isn't confined to Gaza. The West Bank and East Jerusalem remain arenas where tension accumulates gradually, but systematically. The expansion of Israeli settlements and the shifting realities on the ground erode the very foundations of a potential political compromise. At the same time, the Palestinian National Authority is facing a crisis of legitimacy, while Mahmoud Abbas’s public standing has fallen to historic lows. This leaves the Palestinian leadership with ever less societal capital to take painful decisions, while Israel has ever fewer incentives to negotiate with a counterpart whose representativeness is increasingly questioned.

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As a result, 2026 may reinforce a trend toward either a widening of open confrontation or the growth of large-scale, diffuse instability. Localized flare-ups, retaliatory operations, and a new wave of radicalization can easily spill beyond a single territory and spread across other parts of the Palestinian arena. Prospects for a settlement remain limited, especially as long as far-right forces retain a dominant position in power and shape an agenda in which compromise is treated as weakness rather than as an instrument of security.

The tensions associated with the rise of the far right in Israel will not be confined to the Palestinian track. They are increasingly projected onto neighboring theaters, above all Syria and Lebanon, where the logic of forceful dominance and the expansion of “security zones” may once again prevail over cautious diplomacy.

The Syrian theater remains particularly sensitive. Within Israel’s political and security establishment, a persistent deficit of trust toward the new authorities in Damascus endures, and it is not episodic but structural. The change of leadership in the capital is not seen as a guarantee of a transformed security environment. On the contrary, it is often interpreted as a temporary window of uncertainty that can be used to lock in advantages on the ground. In this frame, parts of Israel’s right view 2026 as a historic opportunity to expand control over border areas and increase strategic depth, while simultaneously advancing ideas such as the so-called “David Corridor.” In such a logic, emphasis is placed on leveraging Syria’s minorities, primarily the Druze and the Kurds, and at times even the Alawite factor, as elements in reshaping the local balance to serve broader strategic objectives.

Further complicating the Syrian issue is the growing rivalry between Israel and Türkiye. Ankara, as one of the key external pillars of Syria’s new authorities, is simultaneously expanding its regional political and military reach, which Israel increasingly reads as a strategic challenge. This emerging competition creates an environment in which any local incident can rapidly escalate into a hard-edged show of force, turning Syria once again into an arena not only for local factions, but for major regional power centers.

In 2026, Lebanon’s situation will remain equally complex and potentially explosive. The core issue has not changed – the fate of Hezbollah’s armed wing. Israel and the United States are intensifying pressure on the Shiite movement, viewing it as Iran’s principal proxy instrument and a direct threat to their security calculations. For Hezbollah itself, disarmament is not perceived as a compromise, but as political and military suicide, as it would mean relinquishing the main guarantee of influence and survival within Lebanon’s power system.

That is precisely why volatility in southern Lebanon could once again become the entry point for a broader escalation. Against the backdrop of sharper rhetoric and reciprocal strikes, the risk of a renewed Israeli incursion will rise, especially if Israel’s military leadership concludes that “temporary measures” no longer work.

Yet even a limited operation could set off a chain reaction – Lebanon’s economic exhaustion would deepen, political paralysis would harden, and the social fabric would fray further. In such circumstances, the country’s fragile ethno-confessional balance could begin to crack under the weight of crisis, pushing Lebanon closer to a scenario of internal conflict in which the boundary between an external war and domestic confrontation quickly blurs.

Another multi-layered arena of confrontation for Israel in 2026 will be its standoff with Iran, with the overall logic of events pointing not toward de-escalation, but toward further deterioration. This conflict operates on several levels at once – through direct coercive pressure, through proxy networks, and as an extension of domestic politics both in Israel and in Iran.

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Late 2025 and early 2026 in Iran were marked by a new wave of protests that began amid worsening socio-economic conditions in several major cities and rapidly shifted into the political arena. Reports of a widening protest geography and rising tension appeared in international coverage and analytical assessments. Inside the country, the authorities typically interpret such surges not only as social discontent but also as an element of external interference, an assumption reinforced by previous, well-documented cases of outside actors seeking to shape protest dynamics. This hardens the state’s response and narrows the space for compromise. As a result, internal strain and external confrontation begin to feed one another, producing a closed cycle of escalation.

On the Israeli side, this dynamic is also embedded in domestic political logic. Netanyahu and his coalition, judging from their broader trajectory, are unlikely to lower the stakes regarding Iran in 2026. The image of Iran as an existential threat becomes a mobilizing instrument and an argument for forceful options, shifting the focus away from internal contradictions and toward a security-centered agenda.

Signals from Washington further reinforce the sense that coercive methods are once again being treated as an acceptable tool against regimes the US deems problematic. The Trump administration’s actions toward Venezuela and President Nicolás Maduro in early 2026 served, for Iran and the wider region, as a demonstration of readiness for hard-line scenarios and direct pressure.

For Tehran, this means that 2026 will bring rising external pressure alongside a renewed drive for internal mobilization. Iran’s authorities will seek to strengthen their defensive capabilities and consolidate public opinion around the imperative of protecting sovereignty, drawing on a “besieged fortress” narrative. In this context, an increasingly frequent argument is that the only truly effective instrument of deterrence under such conditions could be the possession of nuclear weapons.

The logic is straightforward – such a capability would raise the cost of a direct strike and thereby reduce the willingness of external actors to pursue a force-based scenario. At the same time, the element of nuclear ambiguity persists, and assessments by international bodies and experts emphasize that Iran’s stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and its enrichment capacity have shortened the timeline to a potential “breakout” in terms of fissile material, even if that is not equivalent to possessing a finished warhead and reliable delivery systems.

This is precisely where the most dangerous crossroads of 2026 emerges. Any movement toward a maximal level of strategic deterrence will inevitably undermine the region’s security architecture and raise the likelihood of Israel using force, with the US also at risk of being drawn in.

The Middle East already contains enough “dry tinder” – proxy networks, strikes on critical infrastructure, exchanges of missile and drone attacks, and mounting threats to maritime routes. In such an environment, a new round of direct Israel–Iran confrontation could quickly outgrow a bilateral duel and spread across multiple theaters at once, with consequences the region may not be able to absorb.

At the same time, competition among regional power centers will intensify in 2026, increasingly spilling beyond the economic sphere and taking on military and political dimensions in third-party arenas. One of the clearest examples is the deepening rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Not long ago it was largely framed as a dispute over development models and investment priorities, yet it is now expressed in clashing interests across crisis zones and in competing efforts to shape and discipline allied forces.

Yemen has become a showcase of this new reality. Late 2025 and the first days of 2026 were marked by renewed escalation in the south – clashes and rapid shifts on the ground, with forces linked to the Southern Transitional Council on one side and structures aligned with the internationally recognized Yemeni authorities, under Saudi patronage, on the other. International reporting has explicitly highlighted that the STC leans on Abu Dhabi’s support, while the official camp remains closer to Riyadh, and this very split is increasingly turning the Yemeni theater into an arena of intra-Gulf confrontation.

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In parallel, the war in Sudan continues, and here too the competition of interests is acquiring a pronounced regional dimension. Saudi Arabia seeks to preserve its role as a mediator and an “anchor” for negotiations, including through the Jeddah track, while persistent allegations circulate concerning the UAE’s support for the RSF and its preference for building its own levers of influence in Sudan. In practice, this means the protracted conflict is fueled not only by internal dynamics, but also by external rivalry over access to resources, logistics corridors, and Sudan’s political future.

This fault line is visible more broadly as well – in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and other arenas where Gulf states are acting less in concert and increasingly through different local networks. The UAE, for its part, has been steadily constructing its own architecture of influence, relying on partnerships with states and proxy actors, which makes its course more autonomous and, in the eyes of some regional elites, more assertive.

An additional layer is Abu Dhabi’s deepening alignment with Israel. Since normalization, the relationship has developed a dense agenda of cooperation, including in security and intelligence. Against the backdrop of a stalled Saudi-Israeli normalization track, absent meaningful movement on the Palestinian issue, this quiet asymmetry in regional alignments becomes a source of irritation and strategic wariness for Riyadh.

At the same time, the contest for influence by the Ankara-Doha axis will also expand, as both seek to consolidate their positions amid regional and global uncertainty. Türkiye and Qatar consistently reaffirm the strategic nature of their partnership – through packages of agreements and coordination on key crises, including Gaza, as well as their involvement in Syria’s political and post-war reconstruction trajectories. In 2026, this does not necessarily imply open confrontation, but it does mean sharper competition among rival projects – each center of power pushing its own vision of regional order, while the collision of these visions becomes yet another amplifier of instability.

Against this backdrop of intensifying regional rivalry, escalation in ongoing conflicts in 2026 looks more like the rule than the exception. Sudan and Libya are particularly illustrative, because both crises have long since moved beyond purely domestic fault lines and are increasingly shaped by the external environment – by money, logistics, and the backing of patrons, as well as by how neighboring actors redistribute influence.

Sudan remains a war with no visible horizon for resolution. Late 2025 brought yet another intensification of fighting and shifts on the front lines, while the humanitarian situation has slipped into chronic catastrophe, where even temporary lulls do not translate into relief for civilians. The central problem for 2026 is that the conflict is sustained not only by the SAF-RSF rivalry, but also by the widening competition of external actors who view Sudan as a space in which to place strategic bets on the future. Under these conditions, diplomatic formulas stall, the parties place their faith not in compromise but in wearing the other down, and 2026 is therefore more likely to be a year of further fragmentation and rising violence than one of stabilization.

Libya is moving along a similar trajectory, albeit in a different form. Front lines do not always resemble trenches, yet political deadlock continues to corrode the state from within. Parallel centers of legitimacy endure, and real leverage often remains in the hands of armed groups. The UN Security Council and diplomats have repeatedly warned that the status quo is becoming ever less sustainable, and the absence of progress deepens instability and erodes trust.

The risk of a renewed cycle of armed competition around Tripoli, meanwhile, has not disappeared. The capital already experienced major clashes in the spring of 2025, and the country’s economic institutions remain vulnerable to pressure from armed actors. The external dimension adds further fuel, as different regional powers continue to back different Libyan camps, turning an internal crisis into an arena of competing projects, where politics is invariably underwritten by force.

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Another factor that will continue to shape the region’s high potential for instability in 2026 is domestic politics. Socio-economic strain and political crises inside Middle Eastern and North African states will directly shape foreign-policy agendas, increasing the likelihood of abrupt decisions and risky bets, especially where ruling elites must simultaneously preserve governability and project strength.

Türkiye is, in this sense, one of the most illustrative cases. The country enters 2026 with a continuing pattern of economic turbulence, in which tight monetary policy and expensive credit weigh on growth, the labor market, and public sentiment. Even senior figures from major state institutions have publicly warned that a prolonged period of high financing costs could become one of the central challenges for the economy and the financial sector in 2026. International assessments, meanwhile, remain cautious in their expectations for inflation and growth, which means households and businesses are likely to continue operating under a persistent sense of instability.

This economic strain is compounded by sharp political polarization. The confrontation between the governing coalition and the opposition is gradually shifting from electoral competition into legal and institutional conflict. Legal pressure on the Republican People’s Party, detentions and investigations targeting opposition figures, and high-profile cases involving Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu have become key indicators of how intensely the domestic contest has escalated. As a result, Türkiye’s foreign policy in 2026 is set to become even more dependent on internal dynamics, as external crises can serve as convenient instruments of consolidation and any concessions abroad may be framed as weakness in the context of domestic rivalry.

Syria remains the second major locus of internal vulnerability, where socio-economic devastation and ethno-confessional fragmentation continue to feed the risk of renewed violence. The scale of post-war economic and infrastructural degradation is such that, even with a relative decline in fighting, the country remains trapped in chronic instability, while reconstruction costs are widely estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The political landscape is multi-layered, as trust among communities has been severely eroded and efforts at centralization face resistance from local actors, alongside unresolved questions over territorial control and armed groups.

For President Ahmed al-Sharaa, 2025 was indeed marked by energetic external diplomacy and attempts to position Syria within regional and global configurations of power. Yet the domestic foundation remains far too fragile. Agreements reached at the top do not automatically translate into trust on the ground, and without rebuilding basic socio-economic structures ensuring well-being, it will be exceedingly difficult to construct sustainable relations among Syria’s ethno-confessional groups. Under such conditions, the risk of a relapse into internal conflict persists, even if it does not initially take the form of a full-scale war, but rather a chain of localized crises that gradually erode the state’s governability.

Egypt enters 2026 as a buffer state, compelled to manage external fires while preserving internal resilience. On its eastern flank, the continuing crisis around Gaza makes Cairo an indispensable mediator and a critical gateway for humanitarian channels, yet the humanitarian architecture itself is becoming more fragile as access rules tighten and restrictions on international organizations expand, increasing the burden on Egypt and complicating risk management along the border.

To the south, Sudan’s protracted war will continue to pressure Egypt’s security and social sphere through displacement flows and humanitarian spillovers, as large numbers of displaced people remain in neighboring countries, including Egypt. To the west, Libya remains a persistent concern, as instability and the fragmentation of armed groups keep the border a conduit for threats ranging from smuggling to cross-border crime. This entire perimeter is further complicated by the Red Sea dimension, where risks to shipping translate directly into pressure on the Suez Canal and, by extension, one of Egypt’s most important sources of national revenue.

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Domestically, these external pressures sit atop an economy that remains the main constraint on Cairo’s political room for maneuver. In 2025 the authorities continued along the reform track linked to the IMF program and raised fuel prices as part of a broader effort to reduce subsidies, a move that feeds directly into public sentiment and the cost of living. At the same time, Egypt is critically dependent on hard currency inflows, which means that any renewed surge of tension in the Red Sea and any drop in Suez transit becomes not merely a foreign-policy problem, but a macroeconomic shock with immediate implications for the budget and stability.

In 2026, Egypt’s foreign policy is therefore likely to be shaped ever more by an “economy of survival” – the imperative to minimize regional turbulence, keep borders under control, and extract maximum diplomatic dividends from its status as an indispensable actor at the intersection of Gaza, Sudan, Libya, and maritime trade routes.

In sum, 2026 is highly likely to entrench the Middle East’s dominant trend of recent years – the erosion of established frameworks alongside a steady multiplication of flashpoints that no longer exist in isolation. The region is entering a year in which conflicts increasingly function as a system of communicating vessels. Escalation in one arena almost automatically raises pressure in another, while the interlinkage of crises makes familiar de-escalation mechanisms less effective.

The Israeli-Palestinian confrontation will continue to set the emotional and political tone for the wider region, and Israel’s concurrent lines of confrontation on the Syrian, Lebanese, and Iranian tracks will reinforce the sense that security is once again being defined not by rules, but by the balance of power. At the same time, competition among regional actors – above all within the Gulf and around the Ankara-Doha axis – will be expressed ever more actively in third-party arenas, from Yemen to Sudan and beyond, turning local conflicts into battlegrounds for competing projects and influence.

Meanwhile, domestic crises across the region will amplify overall conflict potential. Socio-economic strain, polarization, and crises of legitimacy push elites toward harder choices and narrow the space for compromise. When internal stability becomes a matter of political survival, foreign policy inevitably acquires a mobilizational tone, and geopolitics begins to serve domestic imperatives. That is why the decisive factor in 2026 will be less the emergence of entirely new conflicts than the capacity of existing crises to expand and intertwine, producing a chain-reaction effect.

Under such conditions, the most realistic strategy for regional and external actors alike will be risk management and the prevention of major ruptures – by strengthening channels of communication, reducing the likelihood of inadvertent escalation, and building at least minimal economic “cushions” capable of softening social shocks. The overall trajectory, however, remains troubling. The region is entering a year in which the cost of error is rising, while the window for durable stabilization remains narrow.